More women invest in grad school

Females drawn to teaching, health care; lag in business

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- After seeing firsthand how an advanced business degree helped others get ahead in her company, Sharon Soehnel enrolled in an MBA program.

The financial analyst for Fleet National Bank lacked the means to attend grad school full-time. Instead she's squeezing in classes at night and capitalizing on her employer's tuition reimbursement.

"I didn't feel like I could give up those two years of my salary," said Soehnel, 27, who's halfway through four years of a part-time program at Rutgers University. "I like to live comfortably and didn't want to go into debt."

More women are pursuing advanced degrees to keep up with changing job demands and enhance their income, and many are juggling family duties and working what amounts to a third shift to accomplish their educational goals.

They're going back to school in greater numbers than men in overall grad programs and many find that extra credentials give them a better chance of narrowing the pay gap that puts them at a disadvantage over the long-term.

"Men still hold the majority of professional and doctoral degrees, but women have been making big strides," said Jacqueline King, director of center for policy analyst at the American Council on Education.

Women now comprise 56 percent of graduate school enrollment, up from 50 percent in 1986, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.

While fewer women than men are enrolled in physical science programs, business and medical school, they now outnumber men in enrollment for law degrees.

Pursuit of teaching, nursing, and non-MBA master's programs is driving their majority. Three of four education master's degrees go to women, and they earn 71 percent of Ph.D's in the field.

Striving for balance

Women often pursue post-secondary education to make them competitive again after leaving their jobs to focus on their families, said Peter Syverson, vice president of research at the Council of Graduate Schools.

"Often a woman who's stepped out of the workforce to raise a family wants to go back to work and realizes a new master's degree looks a lot better on a resume than a 10-year old bachelor's degree," he said.

The growing expectation of achieving advanced degrees represents a sea change in women's opportunity compared with a generation ago when women faced two tacit choices, King said.

"If you could stand the sight of blood you could become a nurse and if not, you could become a teacher," she said. "We have many more options these days and it's a big part of the crisis of being able to recruit enough teachers."

Women are traditionally attracted to teaching because it offers a lifestyle conducive to raising a family, Syverson said.

"There's the potential to be home when the kids get home from school, or close to it," he said.

To be sure, it's not just education attracting women to higher-ed. They tipped the scale in law school enrollment for the first time last year and made up 68 percent of post-baccalaureate certificate programs.

Where the women aren't

Still, women are much less visible in graduate-level physical sciences, doctoral and business programs.

They made up 43 percent of medical students last year, up from 36 percent a decade ago, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

And their participation in business schools is even more limited, even though the number of women taking the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), the standardized entrance exam for graduate business degrees, has been increasing.

Females comprised a third of traditional full-time MBA seekers, and 38 percent of part-time enrollment last year, according to the AACSB, which tracks business school trends.

MBAs may turn off women who want to go right after earning their bachelor's, said Daphne Atkinson, a spokeswoman for the Graduate Management Admission Council.

"Business schools require two to three years experience before you're an attractive candidate," she said. "Because of lifestyle concerns, women have a preference for going straight through."

But they often face more barriers than just the desire to balance work and family, said Fran Cort, assistant dean of Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management, where women comprise 30 percent of evening MBA students and 32 percent of the full-time population.

"Women have fewer financial resources," Cort said. "Unless a woman is in a position where she's getting a pretty good salary, she may not have the money saved or may be much more risk-averse to taking out large loans."

Accounting for guilt

Women in full-time graduate programs often suffer from guilty mom syndrome, said Julie Swenson, 34, who's adding an advanced business degree to a master's in fine arts.

"They feel like they should be home with their kids, but their husbands don't, or they should be trying to have kids or they should be taking care of their sick mom," she said. "The women who are enrolled and taking it very seriously generally don't have kids or a husband."

Compounding the problem is that today's working women often have fewer child care resources than earlier generations of pioneering females even if they have a lot of money, said Ruth Benerito, an inventor and educator who holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. Watch interview with Dr. Ruth Benerito.

"It was easier to get good domestic help," Benerito said. "Now it's like a rat race. When a woman works and has children, she has to run to the nursery before she goes to work."

Still, women with the opportunity to go for a graduate education would be wise to pursue it while they can, Swenson said.

"There are lots of women who work for companies that would be glad to pay for a master's degree who aren't doing it, and I think it's ridiculous," she said. "It's one of the few no-lose situations in life."

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